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Theory
This is a guest post by our friend Mike Hughes
Some of my best ideas were conceived and communicated using a sharpie and a bar napkin. Unfortunately, some of my best ideas were obliterated by a sweaty beer glass.
I’ve also walked into conceptual reviews with exquisitely detailed, working prototypes only to have the review go something like this:
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Theory
This is a guest post by our friend Mike Hughes.
A mentor of mine is fond of giving the advice “Do what you love to do in the service of those who love what you do.” Whenever I hear UX professionals complain that they are continually having to promote the value of what they do, I wonder if they are serving the right people. If people in your organization are not seeing the value you add, maybe you haven’t positioned yourself where you can add the most value.
In this article I’ll explain how my role has evolved from that of a usability expert to that of a user experience (UX) architect. In making that transition, I have increased my impact on product strategy and I have established a higher perceived value in the organizations I work for. Essentially, I will discuss how my emphasis and contribution has shifted from just making the product usable, to defining a product that is useful, saleable, and buildable.
Theory
The usability data that we collect from remote testing comes in two forms: quantitative and qualitative. We can express quantitative data with numbers, such as how long a user stayed on a page, how many visits a page gets, or by serving up a survey asking users to rate an aspect of a site on a numerical scale. On the other hand, qualitative data is generally expressed in words, such as answers to open ended survey questions. Tests can also collect visual qualitative data such users’ facial expressions, but even then, those are translated into nominal data like “looked frustrated” for analysis and communication purposes.